Oil Price Seen as Security Threat
Oil Price Seen as Security Threat
Kazakstan’s over-dependence on world oil prices is a risk to its future stability, according to participants at a conference on Central Asian security this week.
At the conference, held in Almaty on March 14 and organised by Kazakstan’s Institute for World Economy and Politics and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, participants told NBCentralAsia that the potential risks also include the strong presence of transnational corporations in the Kazak oil and gas industry, the competing regional interests of Russia, the United States and China, and the infighting between rival elite groups on the domestic political scene.
This attempt to identify key foreign and external threats was in part prompted by a regional strategy which the European Union is currently drafting with the Central Asian states, and which is due to be presented in the Kazak capital Astana at the end of March. Regional cooperation on security issues is central to the strategy.
The experts believe Kazakstan should pay as much attention to external risks as to domestic ones.
“Among the external threats to Kazakstan, I would highlight the economic one – an excessive dependence on the world oil price,” Fabrizio Vielmini, a Central Asia expert at the Milan Institute for International Studies, told NBCentralAsia.
Kazakstan-based political scientist Konstantin Syroezhkin sees the increasingly evident geopolitical rivalry between the major powers as a grave threat, but he said a more serious risk was posed by the hold that transnational corporations have over Kazakstan’s oil industry, potentially giving them the ability to influence political decisions.
“It’s potentially a problem that the bulk of oil extraction, which is so vital for Kazakstan’s economy, is in the hands of foreign companies,” he said. “Under particular geopolitical circumstances, they might manipulate the volumes of oil that are extracted and the amount that is invested in new projects, which would have a major impact on Kazakstan’s economic health.”
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
At the conference, held in Almaty on March 14 and organised by Kazakstan’s Institute for World Economy and Politics and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, participants told NBCentralAsia that the potential risks also include the strong presence of transnational corporations in the Kazak oil and gas industry, the competing regional interests of Russia, the United States and China, and the infighting between rival elite groups on the domestic political scene.
This attempt to identify key foreign and external threats was in part prompted by a regional strategy which the European Union is currently drafting with the Central Asian states, and which is due to be presented in the Kazak capital Astana at the end of March. Regional cooperation on security issues is central to the strategy.
The experts believe Kazakstan should pay as much attention to external risks as to domestic ones.
“Among the external threats to Kazakstan, I would highlight the economic one – an excessive dependence on the world oil price,” Fabrizio Vielmini, a Central Asia expert at the Milan Institute for International Studies, told NBCentralAsia.
Kazakstan-based political scientist Konstantin Syroezhkin sees the increasingly evident geopolitical rivalry between the major powers as a grave threat, but he said a more serious risk was posed by the hold that transnational corporations have over Kazakstan’s oil industry, potentially giving them the ability to influence political decisions.
“It’s potentially a problem that the bulk of oil extraction, which is so vital for Kazakstan’s economy, is in the hands of foreign companies,” he said. “Under particular geopolitical circumstances, they might manipulate the volumes of oil that are extracted and the amount that is invested in new projects, which would have a major impact on Kazakstan’s economic health.”
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
